TEHRAN The Norwegian Army expressed regrets on Monday after giving false information about the date of a satellite photograph showing a U.S. vessel alleged to have been in collision with the Russian submarine Kursk.
The new stance may strengthen the idea that Kursk was destroyed in a collision with foreign vessels.
The photograph had originally appeared in the Russian newspaper Versia, and showed the American submarine in the Norwegian Port of Bergen for what the newspaper claimed were possible repairs after collision with the Kursk.
The Oslo newspaper Aftenposten quoted Norwegian military sources on Sunday as rejecting the Russian thesis.
The sources insisted that the picture was at least four years old, and therefore could not relate to the Kursk disaster, AFP reported.
However, the Norwegian Defense Ministry backtracked Monday, correcting the original assertion and tacitly admitting that the photograph might be more recent after all.
The Kursk submarine sank in the Barents Sea last August 12 after its bow was ripped apart in a still-unexplained explosion.
All 118 sailors aboard died. Moscow has favoured an explanation that a foreign vessel monitoring the exercises collided with the Kursk, asserting that three NATO submarines two U.S.
and one British were in the vicinity at the time.
London and Washington have denied any role in the tragedy.
In a statement, the Norwegian Defense Ministry said the army command had "unfortunately released false information concerning a satellite photo which was probably Russian." Aftenposten originally quoted the army sources as saying the photo could not have been taken after 1996.
The sources based this assertion on the fact that the picture showed a nearby empty dock that had since been filled with water.
But in its Monday correction, the ministry admitted that this information was false because of confusion over which dock had been filled up.
It insisted nevertheless that the U.S. submarine that had docked in Bergen, the USS Memphis, had made only a routine call, notified two months in advance. The Memphis was not damaged, it said.
"As far as Norway is concerned, nothing that has been noted indicates that the Kursk was in collision with another vessel before exploding and sinking," the ministry statement said.
Earlier the Reuters reported a top Russian naval commander as saying on that investigations were moving closer to establishing the truth behind the sinking in August of the Kursk nuclear-powered submarine.
Vyacheslav Popov, commander of Russia's Northern Fleet, told the military daily Krasnaya Zvezda that the probe into the disaster, which killed all 118 men on board the Kursk, was leaning towards one of three explanations under consideration.
But he declined to say which one was being favored.
"The government commission is continuing to examine three (possible) reasons for the disaster," he told the daily, according.
"The material gathered has increased the likelihood of one of them.
We are moving closer to the truth." Officials have three theories on what sent the Kursk to the bottom of the Barents Sea a collision with a foreign submarine, a World War II mine or an initial explosion on board which detonated the Kursk's torpedoes.
The navy's Commander in Chief Vladimir Kuroyedov has said he is 80 percent certain the two blasts aboard the Kursk during naval maneuvers were caused by a collision with a foreign submarine.
Britain and the United States have denied their vessels were in the area.
Popov said it had been established that the two blasts occurred between 11.30 and 11.32 on August 12.
Investigation, he said, had ruled out a collision with a Russian submarine, a surface ship or impact from a missile fired from another vessel taking part in the exercises.
He said two notes found on the bodies of sailors recovered from the wreck last month said nothing about the causes of the accident.
One note, written by Lieutenant Captain Dmitry Kolesnikov, showed that 23 sailors had taken refuge in the submarine's rearmost compartment shattering earlier official assurances that all those aboard had died within minutes of the blasts.